Chinese and Comparative Philosophy 中國哲學與比較哲學

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New Book: Teaching the I Ching

We wish to announce our new book, Teaching the I Ching (Book of Changes), by Geoffrey Redmond and Tze-ki Hon, published by the American Academy of Religion and Oxford University Press, 2014.

Chinese traditional culture cannot be understood without some familiarity with I Ching (Yijing), yet it is one of the most difficult of the world’s ancient texts. Assembled from fragments with many obscure allusions, it was the subject of ingenious, but often conflicting, interpretations, over nearly three thousand years. Recent scholarship has radically altered our understanding of the foundational work. Redmond and Hon present an up-to-date survey of recent studies and place them in context with traditional understanding.

The teaching approaches described will do justice to the otherness of the ancient classic, yet engage the interest of twenty-first century students and teachers. Teaching the I Ching (Book of Changes) makes this important text understandable for a broad readership, including those interested in China, early civilization, and world religions.

Partial Contents:

The Rewards and Perils of Studying an Ancient Classic

Divination: Fortune-telling and Philosophy

Bronze Age Origins

Women in the Yijing

Recently Excavated Manuscripts

Ancient Meanings Reconstructed

The Ten Wings

Cosmology

Moral Cultivation

The Yijing as China Enters the Modern Age

The Yijing’s Journey to the West

Readers Guide

Predicting the Future for the Yijing

Bibliography (275 items)

Reviews:

“a reliable road map…to navigate the intriguing intellectual terrain of the ancient Chinese classic….an important reference book for…readers who what to explore the multifarious and mysterious world of Changes.” Dennis K. H. Cheng Chair Professor of Cultural History, Hong Kong Institute of Education; Professor Leiden University and National Taiwan University.

“A magnificent achievement… Redmond and Hon offer…insightful suggestions about how to understand and productively use this document…” Richard J. Smith, Professor, Rice University and author of The I Ching: A Biography.

“The uniqueness of this book is its combination of scholarly rigor with a willingness to explore the phenomenology of divination practice. …an excellent history of the I Ching … including the ways it has been interpreted in both China and the West up to the present day. Joseph A. Adler, Professor, Kenyon College and author of Reconstructing the Confucian Dao: Zhu Xi’s Appropriation of Zhou Daunyi.?